Entertainment

McDonald's Follows Twitter Fiasco With Another Hashtag Campaign

McDonald's — whose last Twitter campaign, themed #McDstories, became a magnet for criticism of the brand — launched another hashtag campaign on Wednesday. The new drive is called #littlethings.

The fast food giant introduced the talking point with the following tweet, which hit at 11:42 EST: "No line at the bank, a large tax refund, & those extra fries at the bottom of the bag. What are some #LittleThings that bring you joy?"

Despite the open-ended nature of the campaign, so far few users have used the hashtag as a forum for bashing the brand or taking the conversation in off-color directions. Responses so far include "a good cup of coffee in the morning" and "a child's laugh."

That's a far cry from #McDstories, which drew comments like "Fingernail in my Big Mac once" and "ordered a McDouble. Something in the damn thing chipped my molar."

However, McDonald's may have another issue with #LittleThings: DoubleTree by Hilton recently launched a Promoted Tweet campaign with the same hashtag. Reps from DoubleTree could not be reached for comment at press time.

McDonald's, which has close to 300,000 followers on Twitter and 13.8 million fans on Facebook, racked up those impressive stats behind strong brand recognition. But the company has been largely tentative with its social media strategy.

That began to change late last year when the brand launched a LivingSocial deal offering a booklet of five Big Mac vouchers and five vouchers for large fries for $13 — half the normal cost. McDonald's also ran a program in December crowdsourcing 10 mini-movies promoting a new menu item, McBites.

Rick Wion, the brand's social media director, says that there will be more news on the social media front: "We are actually launching a larger-scale social effort for a new menu item that includes but goes far beyond Twitter soon," he says.

Do you think #littlethings can eclipse the negative momentum of #McDstories? Let us know in the comments.

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